Position in chronology
DP 552
About this tablet
This is a barley account from the city of Girsu (ancient Lagash), drawn up under the authority of En-iggal, a nubanda or 'overseer/general' well known from other Lagash administrative tablets of this period (roughly 2400 BCE, the era of the rulers Lugalanda and Urukagina). It records amounts of barley credited to or handled by four named individuals — Puzur-Mama, Gala-tur and Engar-me, Inim-manizi and Lu-šinig, and En-udana — totalling 223 gur 1 barig, all classified as grain belonging to the institutional 'nig-enna' stock from a field called Duluh, and deposited in the local market-storehouse. Tablets like this are the bookkeeping backbone of the great Lagash temple-household economy, tracking exactly how much grain moved, from which field, and under whose supervision.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a grain ledger. Puzur-Mama is credited with 86 gur and 1 barig of barley (measured by the standard 'big-head' gur unit). Gala-tur and Engar-me together account for 89 gur 1 barig. Inim-manizi and Lu-šinig are recorded for 16 gur. En-udana is down for 32 gur 1 barig. Adding these up gives a total of 223 gur 1 barig of barley. This grain is identified as belonging to the ruler's official stores, sourced from the field known as Duluh. The overseer En-iggal had this barley brought into the market-house for storage. A final notation of '5' with an uncommon numeral sign closes the account, though its exact unit isn't certain.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine86 gur 1 barig barley (by the gur-saggal measure): Puzur-Mama. 89 gur 1 barig: Gala-tur (and) Engar-me. 16 gur barley: Inim-manizi, Lu-šinig. 32 gur 1 barig barley: En-udana. Total: 223 gur 1 barig barley, by the gur-saggal measure — barley of the nig-enna (the ruler's institutional holdings), it is (from) the field of Duluh. En-iggal, the nubanda (overseer), (had it) filled into the e2-ganba (market-house). 5 [unit-sign, uncertain].
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(gesz2@c) 2(u@c) 6(asz@c) 1(barig@c) sze gur saggal puzur4-ma-ma 1(gesz2@c) 3(u@c) la2 1(asz@c) 1(barig@c) gala-tur engar-me 1(u@c) 6(asz@c) sze inim-ma-ni-zi lu2-szinig 3(u@c) 2(asz@c) 1(barig@c) sze en-u4-da-na szu-nigin2 3(gesz2@c) 4(u@c) 3(asz@c) 1(barig@c) sze gur saggal sze nig2-en-na GAN2 du5-uh2-ka-kam en-ig-gal nu-banda3 e2-ganba-ka-ka i3-si 5(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 552. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P221202) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.